Drawing Beasties at Winthrop

One of the classes I'm teaching at Winthrop University this semester is figure drawing. It requires the same tools that have been used for hundreds of years - charcoal - charcoal sticks, blocks, pencils, you name the form, as long as it's charcoal.Of course, figure drawing doesn't have to be limited to only the human figure. Winthrop has an amazing collection of taxidermy African beasties. So, this week, we rolled them into the studio. My students worked on drawing these (very) still models.But I also had them work with brown craft paper to cut out the shape of each beastie and then arrange them in a manner that best utilizes the negative space, watching out for coincidences of line, or confusing overlaps. They were skeptical at first. Heck, I was skeptical the first time I did this in a figure drawing class. But they soon got into it. And there really is nothing like being able to move around silhouettes of objects to demonstrate the lesson of arranging shapes into pleasing compositions.They finished just under the bell and their results were outstanding. I think they were pleased with what they created.Best of all, I think they all got it, which is all I can ask for! See for yourself. Here are some of the results from Dani, Hannah, and Joy...

Cool, right?

#artswinthrop #designwinthrop